Erica Kahn of Massachusetts was vacationing at the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Arizona last August when she had a spooky encounter with a bat. As she was photographing the night sky, she noticed a group of bats flying around. Then, out of nowhere, one of them flew right up into her face… and into her mouth.
Wait? How did the bat get into her mouth?
As for how the bat got into her mouth? It turned out that it ended up there for a very logical reason. When it got tangled up between her camera and her face, she screamed.
She told KFF Health News that the bat was only in her mouth for a few seconds (she doesn’t know which part of the bat it was), but “it seemed longer.” One can only imagine.
Even though she didn’t think the bat had bitten her, her physician father suggested she get vaccinated against rabies. David Shlim, a travel medicine specialist in Wyoming who studies rabies, told KFF Health News that she made the right decision. “You could hardly have a more direct exposure than that,” he said.
Why didn’t her insurance didn’t cover the medical bills?
Unfortunately for Erica Kahn, that good decision came after a bad one. When she was laid off from her job as a biomedical engineer, she didn’t think she needed to get health insurance. Her logic was that anything happened she would just sign up for a policy then, thinking that she would be covered as long as she got the insurance before going to the hospital. She was wrong…